I’ve started doing searches for some flights we hope to take and, oh my goodness, the costs have really gone up. I had read about it, but seeing the numbers staring me in the face really hit hard.

We do have miles we can use, and now we are figuring out how (if) we can use what United calls “pooled miles”. Initially it seemed pretty easy. But one has to read everything to be sure and get it right and, as it turned out, we can’t use pooled miles for the “Miles & Money” option. It does appear we can use them for just miles alone, though. I guess we’ll find out when we are finally ready to make things real.

What does it all mean, though? Well … my flight will be using all miles. Dan’s will use money & miles. This means we can’t get the tickets all at once — we have to book separately and then go back to United and ask to have the tickets linked. All of this is done in Dan’s account because … hmmm … why? Now I’m not even sure! I’ll have to ask him about that. I know there was some reason. Or at least I think there was.

But oh United makes things difficult. Today I couldn’t log in using a particular browser. The one I prefer. Yesterday it was no problem. Some days it will say the flights I’m looking at aren’t available at all and I’ll go to a different browser and there they are. They should also really fix the calendar: when I select the first flight you’d think the calendar would then show only flights after that date for the next flight, but nope, it goes back to today’s month. Silly.

I have chart I use for flight price comparisons. It’s interesting to see how the prices go up and down. I’ve never found any sort of pattern. And oh how complicated it can all be: for an upcoming trip I had five different route possibilities. My brain is … well … what brain, I ask?!

And yes, the images below are tiny. Sorry!

I’ve also finally put templates together for trips that I think will be easy to use. Prior to this I was creating them each time. The images will change, depending upon our destinations, and I’m sure I’ll be tweaking things as I go along.

First is my itinerary page …

And then all the specifics …

It’s all kind of busy work, I know. But I’ve always loved busy work!

And yes, this was one big long ramble. Because I not only like busy work. I also like to ramble.

It’s so much more fun that doing chores.